Francis Bacon

FRANCIS BACON (Dublin, 1909 - Madrid, 1992).
Right panel of the "Triptych 1974-1977". 1981.
Etching and aquatint engraving on Guarro paper, copy A.P 11/15.
Polígrafa editor, Barcelona.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Measurements: 39 x 29.5 cm (footprint); 65 x 50 cm (paper); 68.5 x 53.5 cm (frame).

Engraving by Francis Bacon based on the right panel of the triptych he made after the death of his lover George Dyer, who committed suicide in a Parisian hotel in 1971. In 2008, the triptych came very close to breaking the artist's record when it was sold in London for 26.3 million pounds. This was one of the so-called "Black Triptychs", executed by Bacon after Dyer's suicide. The black umbrella as an ominous symbol was already present in previous works by the artist, but in this triptych the literary or artistic references are diluted, making the reading more complex. It is a subjugating work.

An Anglo-Irish painter born in Dublin into a British family, Francis Bacon was a key artist in the development of 20th century art because of his raw, shocking and plasticity-laden imagery. He spent his childhood between Ireland and England, and in his puberty his father excluded him from his family because of his homosexual tendencies. In 1925 he was sent to Berlin with a family friend, whom he finally seduced. Between 1927 and 1928 he lived between Berlin and Paris, and it was during these years that he discovered Poussin's "The Massacre of the Innocents", a work that awakened in him an interest in the scream and the mouth. During these years he decided to become a painter, after visiting an exhibition that included several works by Picasso. He returned to London and began his artistic training with the Australian Roy de Maistre, studies that he completed in a self-taught way. However, it was not until the mid-1940s (around 1944) when his triptych "Three Studies for Figures at the Foot of a Crucifixion" marked the starting point of his artistic career. This work, considered one of the most original and disturbing in 20th century art, marked the beginning of Bacon's artistic maturity, whose work will focus from then on the theme of life in death and death in life, reflecting his own self-destructive character. From then on, too, his work would be characterized by exposed and vulnerable human figures, an expression of "loneliness, violence and degradation", in his own words. Recognition of his mature work was almost immediate, and in 1949 the MoMA in New York acquired one of his works. Already fully consolidated in the international art scene, in 1955 his first retrospective exhibition was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 1959 he had a solo show in the context of the São Paulo Biennial, and in 1962 he was again given a retrospective, this time at the Tate Gallery in London. In the following years Bacon held important exhibitions of his work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1963), the Grand Palais in Paris (1971) and the Metropolitan in New York (1975), as well as retrospectives at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the MoMA in New York and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. More recently, the Tate Britain's major retrospective of Bacon's work in 2008 was the largest to date. Bacon is currently represented in the world's leading museums, including MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the MUMOK and the Albertina in Vienna, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the SMAK in Ghent and the Tate Gallery in London.